About The Team

The Engineering A Brighter Sudan Project consists of four University of San Diego (USD) engineering students: Emmett Perl, Enrique Rayon, Michael Rios, and Mou Riiny.

Mou Riiny

Mou Riiny received his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of San Diego in December 2011, at which point he returned to South Sudan to make sure the equipment arrived safely to the village. He is now starting a business in South Sudan called SunGate Solar to bring more solar energy to the country. In conjunction with IEEE’s Community Solutions Initiative he will be piloting two solar products for 2013. Mou is a member of the “Lost Boys of the Sudan” meaning that as a child he was forced to walk more than 500 miles to a refugee camp in Kenya to escape civil war between north and south Sudan. In 2000, he was relocated to the United States. He is now working on various development projects in South Sudan. Our project will bring electricity to a school that Mou has been working to build through Village Help for South Sudan.

Emmett Perl

Emmett Perl received his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of San Diego in 2011. He is currently working towards his M.S./Ph.D in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests include the design and fabrication of novel light coupling structures and their integration into high efficiency multi-junction photovoltaic cells. Emmett was named an NSF Gradate Research Fellow in 2011 and is currently working on projects with Engineering a Brighter Sudan and Unite to Light to help bring electricity to rural areas throughout the world.

Michael Rios

Michael Rios received his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of San Diego in December 2011. He is currently pursing graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison in the Wisconsin Electric Machines and Power Electronics Consortium (WEMPEC). Here he is learning about power systems, renewable energy, power electronics, electric machines, and microgrids.

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Enrique Rayon

Enrique Rayon received his Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of San Diego in 2011. Since the end of the senior design portion of the Engineering a Brighter Sudan project (May 2011) he has decided to focus his efforts on his career in the biomedical industry.